The history of violent leftist anarchists in the US
Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Noah Rothman, who has written a new book on leftist violence in the United States during the last hundred years. It’s called Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America, and it sounds fascinating although I haven’t read it.
Here’s the video interview between Coleman Hughes and Rothman:
Here’s a part that especially caught my attention. It’s about six minutes long. The subject is the heyday of anarchist attacks a hundred or so years ago. Most if not all of us have heard of Sacco and Vanzetti and the disagreements about whether they were innocent or guilty, and that’s such a huge topic I’m not going to tackle it here. Suffice to say that one thing is known: they were anarchists, and it was a time of violence in the US by anarchists who were mostly Italian:
My curiosity was piqued by this. Now, Italian anarchists of the early 20th century are not closely analogous to Islamic terrorists or leftist terrorists of the 1960s-1970s or the present day (despite the echoes in the name “Luigi Mangione”), but they share some characteristics such as the desire to destroy the current order through violence. How did the US actually deal with the problem a hundred years ago? Well, there was what’s known as the First Red Scare:
The First Red Scare in the United States, occurring from 1917 to 1920, was a period of intense public fear and anxiety regarding the perceived rise of communist and socialist ideologies. This era was marked by increased labor activism, immigration, and industrialization. The Russian Revolution of 1917, which saw the overthrow of the tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks, fueled fears of a similar uprising in the U.S. A. Mitchell Palmer, the U.S. Attorney General, initiated a series of raids, known as the Palmer Raids, targeting foreign-born individuals suspected of radical leftist sympathies. These raids, often criticized for their questionable legality and brutality, failed to uncover evidence of a widespread conspiracy, and public concern waned by 1920 when predicted revolutionary actions did not materialize.
Some of the information you can find online ascribes fear of Italian anarchists to xenophobia and bigotry and glosses over the very real and radical destructive goals of the anarchists (see this Boston Public Library site for an example). Why did anarchy take such root among Italians? Here’s a short summary:
From the last third of the 19th century until soon after the turn of the 20th century, Italy (with the exception of Spain) was the site of Europe’s largest anarchist movement. Mikhail Bakunin, the progenitor of modern anarchism, first found widespread support in Italy, and, while there, from 1863 to 1867, he published his seminal writings, which remain the framework for anti-organizational, libertarian anarchism. Italian intellectuals, notably Carlo Pisacane and Errico Malatesta, contributed to the development of anarchist theory. In the United States, anarchism persisted longer and had more effect in the Italian immigrant community than elsewhere. Most significantly, it challenged (for a time successfully) Fascist hegemony in the multitudinous Little Italys where the vast majority of Italian Americans resided.
I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in a largely Italian community, and by then there wasn’t a trace – to be seen by me, anyway – of either anarchism or Fascism. But earlier, apparently, things were different. More here:
Galleanists [anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani] were primary suspects in a campaign of bombings between 1914 and 1920. Instances included mail bombs to business and government officials and the 1920 Wall Street bombing, which killed 38 people. In effect, however, none of the Galleanisti bombs hit their targets: capitalists, police, or judges. Their casualties were themselves and bystanders. Their bombing methods borrowed from the Italian Black Hand extortion rackets, in which the attacker would write a threat of future violence and place bombs in doorways. These extortionists adapted fireworks, a popular Italian industry, with shrapnel or stolen dynamite from construction jobs. Anarchists, however, lacked the community experience with high explosives and thus overestimated their ability to create working bombs and underestimated their own risk.
New York City Galleanisti formed the Bresci Circle in honor of Gaetano Bresci, the anarchist assassin of Umberto I of Italy. By 1914, almost 600 members met regularly at a rundown house in East Harlem. A plot to bomb the Rockefellers increased police interest in the group.
Several months after the 1914 Ludlow Massacre that had incensed Galleanisti, a group of anarchists carried a bomb to the Tarrytown estate of the Ludlow coal mine owner, John D. Rockefeller, in July 1914. They miscalculated, both in failing to trigger the device and since Rockefeller was then out of town. A member of the Circle was arrested[8] and the bomb, which they carried to an East Harlem tenement near the Circle’s headquarters, exploded, demolishing half of the building and killing three anarchists.
That’s just the tip of a pretty large iceberg; also don’t forget that in 1901 President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, although not an Italian one:
[The assassin] Czolgosz had lost his job during the economic Panic of 1893 and turned to anarchism, a political philosophy adhered to by contemporary assassins of foreign leaders. He regarded McKinley as a symbol of oppression and was convinced that it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him. He was unable to get near the president during an earlier visit, but he shot him twice as McKinley reached to shake his hand in the reception line …
Another event in the series was this:
On June 2, 1919, a militant anarchist named Carlo Valdinoci blew up the front of newly appointed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home in Washington, D.C.—and himself up in the process when the bomb exploded too early.
A young Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who lived across the street, were also shaken by the blast.
The bombing was just one in a series of coordinated attacks that day on judges, politicians, law enforcement officials, and others in eight cities nationwide.
About a month earlier, radicals had also mailed bombs to the mayor of Seattle and a U.S. Senator, blowing the hands off the senator’s domestic worker. The next day, a postal worker in New York City intercepted 16 more packages addressed to political and business leaders, including John D. Rockefeller.
One way the US dealt with the problem was mass roundups and deportation:
[Attorney General] Palmer created a small division to gather intelligence on the radical threat and placed a young Justice Department lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover collected and organized every scrap of intelligence gathered by the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor) and by other agencies to identify anarchists most likely involved in violent activity. …
…[T]he Department of Justice began arresting, under recently passed laws like the Sedition Act, suspected radicals and foreigners identified by Hoover’s group, including well-known leaders Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. In December, with much public fanfare, a number of radicals were put on a ship dubbed the “Red Ark” or “Soviet Ark” by the press and deported to Russia.
At this point, though, politics, inexperience, and overreaction got the better of Attorney General Palmer and his department. Hoover—with the encouragement of Palmer and the help of the Department of Labor—started planning a massive roundup of radicals.
By early January 1920, the plans were ready. The department organized simultaneous raids in major cities, with local police called on to arrest thousands of suspected anarchists. But the ensuing “Palmer Raids” turned into a nightmare, marked by poor communications, planning, and intelligence about who should be targeted and how many arrest warrants would be needed. The constitutionality of the entire operation was questioned, and Palmer and Hoover were roundly criticized for the plan and for their overzealous domestic security efforts.
You can find a longer discussion here with a lot more details. The most important part, I think, is this:
The people who were arrested during the Palmer Raids were picked up not because of anything they had done but because of what they might do. In fact, many of those arrested and held for deportation did not believe in violence. The Union of Russian Workers had declared its belief in revolution when it was founded in 1907, but by 1919 it had largely become a social club whose members were unaware of its founding principles. The Department of Labor later canceled thousands of deportation orders issued to members of the Communist Labor Party on the grounds that it, too, was not a truly revolutionary party. In the end, the government succeeded in deporting only eight hundred of the more than four thousand people it had arrested.
Another thing that happened was a change in immigration policies. The Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 (after McKinley’s assassination) prohibited anarchists from entering, although it doesn’t seem to have been all that effective. In 1924 far more restrictive immigration quotas were implemented and made it more difficult for newer populations such as Italians to come here.
Thus, the immediate threat died down. But the threat had been very real. And there remain lingering echoes of anarchism in today’s political violence. Are Antifa anarchists, for example? Some most definitely are, although today’s radical leftist terrorists are more of a mixed bag in terms of their philosophy. But although history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes.
ADDENDUM: Recently Rubio gave a speech on the subject of left-wing terrorism. Here it is:
Well, at least they didn’t use Rule 30’06, being America not the empire.
Joan Baez is singing about Joe Hill and the Wobblies in the background?
Luigi Mangioni, the murderer (accused) of Brian Thompson must have been pining for the olden times? (sarc)
The Wobblies are probably worth looking up. 1917 was the heyday of the IWW with 150,000 members worldwide though they are technically still around with about 12,000 members today.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre
The Everett massacre, also known as Bloody Sunday, was an armed confrontation between local authorities and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, commonly called “Wobblies” in Everett, Washington, United States on November 5, 1916. The event happened amidst a time of rising tensions in Pacific Northwest labor history.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Alfred, ‘The Dark Knight’
The political complaints are just manufactured justifications for indefensible actions.
Great post.
Not to be too pedantic, but McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, not 1903.
djf:
Thanks! I think I wrote 1903 because of the statute that was passed in 1903. Will fix.
Sad Trombone gives a long blockquote without citation, but then it hasn’t proved to be prescient IMO. Industrial society, robots replacing assembly line workers, automated machine tools, AI; but totalitarian big ideas for progress just keep going.
True tyranny has and is being tried.
Forward into the future! The arc of history! Comrade. (sarc)
I recall the early 1900s as the time that socialists had the most electoral success, the violent incidents were their undoing. The US has had a lot of violent politics over the years, not to mention the Whiskey Rebellion, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, and the Civil War. We don’t think of ourselves as having violent politics, but we do. Even the English had “The Troubles” not so long ago. What is remarkable is that we have survived with the low level violence through the years without a fundamental change in government. Our government has evolved, but without revolution.
Bloody Sunday Everett, WA 1916, resulted in four deaths.
The Easter Rising, Ireland, 1916, had 470 deaths, over 6 days. (Wickedmedia)
Progress, hard, hard times. All the while The Great War was raging.
Om: Well, at least they didn’t use Rule 30’06, being America not the empire.
Ah, in America it would be Rule 30’06,
whereas in the Boer War it would be Rule .303
Have I got that right?
Do the DSA know what history is?
A fable told by those in power?
Aside: just now autocorrect tried to replace “fable” with “rabble.” Kitty helps.
AppleBetty:
That is correct.
Very good post.
Bakunin studied in Moscow, then Berlin, and spent time in Paris where he met Marx and Proudhon. I didn’t know he was a big deal in Italy later.
Many years ago I read up on anarchism and at the time writers claimed that the three fathers of the movement were Proudhon, Bakunin, and Louis-Auguste Blanqui. Now it seems that Mr. Blanqui is persona non grata.
Blanqui was a saboteur and spent considerable time in jail, and came up with the semi-obvious idea that people who wish to engage in such destruction should be very surreptitious and dishonest about such activities in order to avoid authorities. I think part of his contribution, was the idea that to carry out large scale destruction there probably needs to be an organization behind it, and that organization needs a legitimate but dishonest “front” purpose. A labor union is one such type of organization.
Of course, now… do anarchist members wish to be honest about their dishonesty? I don’t think so. So, no mention of Mr. Blanqui.
I was thinking about the chain of ideological followers that link the following people: Frank Nitti (aka Francesco Nitto), Saul Alinsky, and Hillary Clinton. Nitti was a Chicago mobster, but later in his career he got involved in trying to infiltrate labor unions. This was around 1932. Later than neo’s similar references.
Then, Saul Alinsky essentially does some tutelage under Frank Nitti. I don’t know or recall what exactly that was, but presumably he learned how to manipulate people for the purpose of “community organizing.”
Much later, a young Hillary Clinton in the latter part of her college studies, writes a thesis about Saul Alinsky. At some point, she takes an opportunity to meet with Mr. Alinsky. Contemporaries state that Hillary was absolutely giddy about the meeting.
In looking up Frank Nitti on Wikipedia, I saw this rather amazing item:
So we almost lost two US presidents to anarchist assassins. Pres. McKinley and FDR.
This is the Wiki headline paragraph on Zangara.
OK, not an anarchist. 😉
I’ve read through the Sacco and Vanzetti story several times without reaching a firm conclusion. According to ChatGPT:
___________________________________
I would state the historical position this way:
* Beyond reasonable doubt: not established, especially for Vanzetti.
* Fair judicial process: plainly absent.
* Vanzetti’s factual guilt: improbable or at least highly doubtful.
* Sacco’s factual guilt: genuinely possible, perhaps more likely than not, but not securely established because the ballistic evidence cannot be separated from chain-of-custody and forensic-method problems.
* Justification for executing both: virtually indefensible.
–ChatGPT 5.5
___________________________________
Sounds reasonable. It was a bad trial in a tumultuous time. The final truth is probably unresolvable now.
Just imagine. Zangara nearly assassinated FDR just before his first inauguration. Lots of rotten things happened during the Roosevelt admin., but I gather that his handling of WWII was quite excellent. Partly because FDR selected and kept William Knudsen very involved the effort. This was vastly better than Wilson’s handling of WWI.